While Don will surely keep Sal’s secret, his help certainly ends at the point where Sal’s homosexuality starts affecting the work.
That’s what I wrote about the season premiere, in which Don and Sal had their awkward adventure in Baltimore. Don knows all about wanting to keep certain aspects of your life private from those you work with, so he certainly wasn’t going to run around outing Sal to the rest of their Sterling Cooper colleagues. However, his willingness to keep Sal’s secret does in no way indicate that he’s down with the gays, as we saw last night.
As a viewer, I have a love/hate relationship with Don Draper. Sure, he’s smooth, charming, enigmatic, wounded, and obviously ridiculously good-looking. But this week’s episode makes it really difficult to overlook his more negative qualities. As I watched him in bed with that floozy teacher, all I could think of was the million different ways I would murder him if I were Betty and I found out my husband was cheating on me again, while I have an infant at home. Plus, when he was talking to Sal, and hit him with the disgusted, “You people,” it was a jarring reminder that Don Draper isn’t the hero we sometimes make him out to be.
So yes, Don Draper is a homophobe, but that’s not why Sal was fired. Roger and Don both fire Sal, and Roger has no inkling of Sal’s homosexuality. In a business like Sterling Cooper, the client is king. Lucky Strike is their biggest client, and as Don explains to Sal, “They can turn off our lights.” Losing this client could literally mean losing the company. So if their biggest client wants Sal gone, then he’s gone.
In this particular instance, the client wanted Sal gone because he rebuffed his advances, but if the client comes to Roger or whomever and says, “Get rid of the Italian,” he would have been fired. If the client would have said, “Get rid of the guy in the tan sportcoat; I hate tan sportcoats,” Sal would have been fired. In fact, for all Roger knows that could have been why he was firing Sal.
Unfortunately for Sal, he’s in an untenable position, which Don reminds him of. What is he going to do, complain? Air out his secret in front of the entire company? This was 1963. He certainly couldn’t sue for sexual harassment or wrongful termination. Roger doesn’t know his secret and he wants him gone. Don does know his secret and he still wants him gone.
So what is Sal going to do? I doubt this will be the last we see of him; right now he’s cruising in the park, but hopefully he’ll come up with a plan soon. He has nothing to lose, so I kind of suspect that he’ll do what Don seems to have been suggesting in his office: give the client what he wants. After all, the client is king.
Clacked by Kona Gallagher 
on Oct 12, 2009 @ 10:00 EST5EDT
